The Kill
by Clockwork Hobbit
Summary: The Doctor holds the dying Master and cries. The Master knows he is dying, but also knows he won.


**This is based off the song "The Kill" by Thirty Seconds to Mars. Good song, highly recommend. Hope you enjoy this oneshot, and please review.**

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_What if I wanted to break/Laugh it all off in your face/What would you do?/What if I fell to the floor/Couldn't take all this anymore/What would you do, do, do?/Come break me down/Bury me, bury me/I am finished with you_

He needed to win, to beat the Doctor. It was important. He had been trying so hard, and he had gotten so close. He had aged the Doctor. He had captured the girl, Martha Jones, and her family. He had gotten so close. And then his traitor of a wife had shot him, and now he lay dying in the Doctor's arms, holding off his regeneration. The Doctor was literally shouting at him, in _tears_... "REGENERATE!" But he refused. He couldn't let the Doctor win. He couldn't. And if he regenerated, the Doctor won. He wanted his worst adversary to live, to live to fight another day. And the Master refused. He wouldn't let the Doctor win like that. It would be too easy. Besides, didn't the Doctor _want_ the Master gone? He had certainly fought against him through lifetimes, through all of time and space and it was never ending. They had always fought so hard against each other, and now, the Doctor was looking at a victory. But so was the Master, the last victory he would ever have. He finally realized didn't need to rule, to take over the earth and space and the fabric of reality-he just needed to beat the Doctor. And this was how he would do it.

_What if I wanted to fight/Beg for the rest of my life/What would you do?/You say you wanted more/What are you waiting for?/I'm not running from you/Come break me down/Bury me, bury me/I am finished with you/Look in my eyes/You're killing me, killing me/All I wanted was you_

The Master was dying in his arms. This was not okay with the Doctor. He couldn't let the only other Time Lord in existence die. And especially not the Master. They had always butted heads, but the Doctor needed the Master. They were polar opposites, and yet they were the exact same. The Master was the Doctor, the Doctor was the Master. Take the inverse of one, you got the other. The Doctor, the savior of humanity, the universal good guy. The Master, the bane of humanity, the universal bad guy. It was written in the stars, the endless dance of the Doctor and the Master. He was crying over the dying man-dying Time Lord-he held, begging him to regenerate, to come back. To kill the Master killed a piece of the Doctor. He couldn't die, not now. The Doctor was literally on his knees, begging for the Master to live. If he did regenerate, how easy it would be to end everything right there, kill the Doctor. And yet he still wouldn't come back. And then the Doctor realized-this was how the Master would win.

_I tried to be someone else/But nothing seemed to change/I know now, this is who I really am inside_

He had taken on so many personalities in his fight against his greatest enemy. So many faces, even one human form, but it had all come back to this. Come back to defeating the Doctor. Harold Saxon...who needed him? All the Master needed was the Doctor. He no longer cared about anything else-the drums had not been telling him to take over the world, just to defeat the Doctor. Four beats-the double heartbeat of a Time Lord. And who was the one remaining Time Lord, beside the Master himself? The Doctor. This was what he been meant to do-rid the universe of the ridiculous man in the blue box.

_Finally found myself/Fighting for a chance./I know now, this is who I really am._

There had been so many faces, nine previous, not including the one he would never admit to, so many different madmen in that box, the box that was old and new and full of the whole universe, all at once. And the Master was the constant. Companions left, grew old, died, the TARDIS changed, quite possibly to keep up with her changing Time Lord, but the Master and his rivalry with the Doctor stayed constant. The other Time Lord changed faces as well, but that one thing never changed-the animosity between the pair.

_Come break me down/Bury me, bury me/I am finished with you, you, you./Look in my eyes/You're killing me, killing me/All I wanted was you/Come break me down (bury me, bury me)/Break me down (bury me, bury me)/Break me down (bury me, bury me)_

The Doctor locked eyes with the Master, and there he saw exhaustion, exhaustion that he was sure was the same in his own eyes, resignation, and, if he looked closely, victory. He was dying, of course, but he had won. He wouldn't live to see that victory, but he had achieved it. And now the Doctor would be forced to bury yet another person who had meant so much to him. He saw the Master's eyes flutter closed, felt his double heartbeat falter and stop, and knew that his adversary was no more. And then he decided to burn the Master's body. He had burned all the other Time Lords, and now it felt right to burn the only other child of Gallifrey there was.

_(You say you wanted more)/What if I wanted to break...?/(What are you waiting for?)/Bury me, bury me/(I'm not running from you)/What if I/What if I/What if I/What if I/Bury me, bury me_

Several hours later, the Doctor stood in front of a pyre, built by his own hands, built with _love_, almost, for the Master. The body had already been laid on top of it, cradled gently from the room he had died in to the location the Doctor had chosen for his final farewell to the Master, cradled in both the embrace of what was now the only Time Lord as well as the only TARDIS.

The Doctor sighed heavily, the sigh of a far older man than he looked, the sigh of a man the age he truly was, lifted his torch, and threw it onto the pyre, then stood watching as the whole thing slowly went up in flames, taking with it the only companion the Doctor had truly had, the only other Time Lord in the galaxy.

The Doctor wept.


End file.
